Dozen Hospitalized in Mount Olive Carbon Monoxide Incident
Carbon monoxide strikes in the best neighborhoods, strikes indiscriminately to children, adults or even rescue workers. Even Good Samaritan passer byes who save the day may get poisoned is the levels are high enough. That is how a dozen people got hospitalized in the Mount Olive Carbon Monoxide poisoning on Monday, August 14, 2017. Mount Olive is in New Jersey.
A dozen hospitalized after Mount Olive carbon monoxide poisoning. Levels reach 1,600 ppm. Video embedded below.
While unconfirmed, reports are that the carbon monoxide ambient air levels in the beautiful single family home in Mount Olive were as high as 1600 ppm. Even an hour in that poisoned environment could kill. That level was high enough to poison rescue workers. Reports are that at least four occupants of the home were so poisoned that they need hyperbaric oxygen therapy to help push the carbon monoxide out of their system.
According to New York CBS local:
Melanie Milo and her boyfriend Afam Nwande were walking along Finnimore Court at 7:30 p.m. Monday when they heard calls for help coming from a man who had just come home to find his entire family passed out inside. Outside the home, the man’s two young children were laying unconscious on the lawn.
“No smell, no odor, just people,” Milo said.
“He says ‘My wife’s in there, I need help carrying her.’ I ran upstairs, she’s at the top of the stairs, I picked her up brought her out and I laid her next to his kids,” Nwande said.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/08/15/mount-olive-carbon-monoxide-poisoning/amp/
Two young men were found unresponsive in the basement. One was nude, possibly because he fell unconscious in the shower.
Levels as high as were in the home are often referred to as “drop where you stop” levels.
“The one gentleman was on the floor in the bathroom, he was nude, it appears he may have fallen out of the shower, the other one was asleep in a room,” Milo said.
If there were carbon monoxide detectors inside of the home they should certainly have gone off by the time the levels got to 100 ppm. Investigations as to the cause of the Mount Olive carbon monoxide poisonings are focused on the hot water heater, which is often the culprit in warm weather poisonings.
This incident news reminds us the importance of installing carbon monoxide detector at home. It is because there is no other way to recognize the existence of this silent killer.
The second safety lesson we can learn from this incident is the need of safety induction or safety talk about the carbon monoxide hazards for the whole family members.